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In a typical week, 10,000 people carry out 2600 engineering works across the Hong Kong rail system – from grinding rough rails smooth and replacing tracks to checking for damage.

Typically arranging this works has taken been handled by humans. And as expected not a night goes by without 1 or 2 minor glitches. But sense the new A.I. release not many “glitches” occur.

“Hong Kong has one of the world’s best subway systems. It has a 99.9 per cent on time record – far better than London Underground or New York’s subway. It is owned and run by MTR Corporation, which also runs systems in Stockholm, Melbourne, London and Beijing. MTR is now planning to roll out its AI overseer to the other networks it manages.”

“It will probably be Beijing first,” says Andy Chan of Hong Kong’s City University, who designed the AI system and worked with MTR to build it into their systems. “Before AI, they would have a planning session with experts from five or six different areas,” he says. “It was pretty chaotic. Now they just reveal the plan on a huge screen.”

The schedule generated is still subject to human approval. But the AI handles the rest.

“MTR’s repair teams now have 30 minutes longer to finish their night’s work – a small time boost that saves MTR 00,000 a year.”

Sadek says similar problems crop up when trying to get transport departments in the US to use AI to improve their networks. “People get scared when you talk to them about AI,” he says. “A Department of Transport official is responsible for lives, they want to see how the decisions are being made.”